Waning Stars
by nevukiun
Summary: Post-Fate Shirou tries to find his place in a new world.
1. Chapter 1

AN : I've rewritten portions of the fight with Raynare and added a lot of new content in chapters 3+4, older readers can skip chapter 2 if they wish

Waning Stars

Shirou watched the girl unfurl raven wings and take flight, asking as she did, "Will you die for me?" of the boy in front of him in the park. To think, he had really only planned on going on a brief walk to acquaint himself with the city.

Shirou reacted immediately- there was someone in front of him to save. His thoughts narrowed in focus, shutting out any extraneous thoughts. All that existed in this moment was the terrain, the girl, the boy, and himself. His mind immediately began catologuing things of use in the environment, with each random signpost to each rock being evaluated in a moment. His prior experience in this sort of situation may explain his oddly advanced reaction. After evaluating his options briefly, he came to the conclusion that the best way to save the boy was to use himself as bait. If he could make himself into a more attractive, more immediate target for the girl then the boy would be able to get away from the point of danger and be saved. With this in mind, he set about making himself into an object of danger, Tracing On Kanshou and Bakuya, the twin chinese swords, and letting loose a fierce shout in hopes of gaining her attention.

Raynare initially gave an instinctive glance at the feel of mana being manipulated in the area, but the sight that greeted her and the shout directed at her was an immense surprise. Her mind honestly went blank when she realized a young Japanese human was charging directly at her with a pair of metal swords. She would have been far less surprised if he had been wielding exorcists weapons or perhaps even if he had wielded more mundane, modern weapons such as guns and merely been an ignorant bystander. In a way, it was a stroke of luck for Shirou, as Raynare's past experiences had taught her to be wary of those wielding swords. She immediately halted her dive towards ther pervert and altered course towards Shirou, aiming her spear towards his chest, intent on ending the perceived threat immediately. It was a puzzling thing to find an opening in his defences for her to go through, but she wasn't one to pass on the opportunity to take advantage of the ignorance of a human. Her displeasure at her strike being deflected easily and countered effectively was immense. Had he been faster or stronger she would have taken a mortal blow.

Shirou internally felt a measure of pleasure as his fighting style worked out effectively once again, but frowned when his riposte merely landed a glancing blow on her left arm. A trail of blood was running from her bicep to her forearm. Her eyebrows started twitching as she noticed, and as one who had known Rin well Shirou knew what that meant - there was an extremely pissed off woman speaking to him. The winged... thing, for it clearly wasn't human, began to speak in a low, halting voice to him. Shirou knew that tone, and realized that it while it couldn't mean anything good for him on the other hand there was very little he could do to further piss off the being, and ignoring grandiose angry speechs was rarely a mistake in his experience. He took the opportunity to motion at the boy still lying motionlessly in fear on the ground that he should run the hell away. The boy just stared at him in confusion. It seemed that his mind had shut down from all the impossibilities stirring together. Shirou sighed and projected a very dull knife over top of the youths head, dropping it on top of him hilt first. He jerked and immediately started to run away at this point. Shiro's mind began to focus on the being's speech for any signs that she was about to stop monologuing and chase the fleeing youth.

"-Your suffering will be legendary, you damned ape!" Nope. No sign at all. Raynare apparently noticed his expression had changed and came to a realization "Have you been ignoring me this whole time!?" Shirou decided that no response would be helpful to him here, so merely continued his impassive staredown of the feathered creature in front of him. Her face had become flushed with anger at this point, and he was glad. He was glad because the greater her anger at him, the lesser the likelihood was of her even remembering about the other human. And at this point it seemed as though hating him had consumed her whole being. She opened her mouth to continue haranguing him, but apparently decided better of it and descended once more into a steep, steady dive with a light spear leading the way. This time, when he left an obvious opening, she didn't attempt to take it.

Raynare was focused on this boy. She had to prove her superiority to him. In her mind, it was like falling in a way. It was as if she were being declared inferior to this being in front of her. He became a stand-in for her view of the entire situation between angels and humans, with the one being declared inferior for no obvious reason. This was somehow worse, though- a mere human had proven that he was equal to her on some level, capable of wounding her. He was a danger of proving himself superior for a very obvious reason, and mentally she could not handle it. If she could prove her superiority to this being in every way, maybe God would love her again. For this reason she choose a path that was almost a direct contradiction to the obvious - she directed her light spear directly against the crossed guard of Kanshou and Bakuya. She had known that this one had created those blades in some way, in a similar method to how she created her light spears. To her mind, it was honestly a perversion of nature. She was doubly enraged when the swords shattered her spear, and the rage altered her thinking even further. Another light spear appeared in her hand, and her wings furled into a shape suitable to allow her to go into a steeply angled dive. She had no thought except to break the weapons of the human boy in front of her.

Shirou saw her diving towards him, lance extended, and noted the contrast between the beauty of the individual and the grotesque parody anger had made of her face. He altered his stance, leaving a massive opening below his torso, his plan was to use her going for the opening to deflect the blow and use the energy to give himself some room between the two of them, as he doubted he was a match for her strength in close combat. His plan faltered when instead of going for the obvious opening, she drove her spear directly into the strongest part of his defense, where he had crossed Kanshou and Bakuya in front of his heart. It didn't break his guard, but the sheer force with which she hit him threw him directly backwards, and he felt a sharp pain in his chest. His concentration was broken by the sharp jolt of pain and he felt his focus waver, causing Kanshou and Bakuya to disappear. He looked down and saw a sharp tree branch jutting from his chest. He had been thrown into one of the many trees in the park and had his momentum stopped in a rather harsh manner, he thought.

Whoever she was, the girl had jumped away from him, still enraged at first, but she had calmed once she had seen his weapons disappear. The girl turned away from Shirou, to face her initial target, and began to move rapidly again. She had judged him no longer a threat, and for anyone else that would likely have been true. Shirou, however, had been through this once before. He had been through multiple heavy wounds in the time since, his pain tolerance was approaching inhuman levels. Avalon inside of him could not heal him alone from this wound, but it could slow down the rate at which the damage killed him. Not much, but enough for a single breath's worth of action. Shirou, with the determination only seen in those who are prepared to face their deaths, summoned a fresh pair of Kanshou and Bakuya, and threw Bakuya in a direction that would take it behind her. He clutched Kanshou, he knew he was fresh on a devil's gambit. The fresh burst of mana behind her had warned Raynare that there was still a threat. She turned to face him, and was surprised when the blade went wide of her anyways. She saw the life fading from his eyes, and laughed triumphantly.

The last sound Shirou heard was a wet cracking sound, and a pained, absolutely inhuman shriek of agony, followed by the dull thump of something hitting the ground.

Issei Hyoudou was freaking out. He had seen far too much in too short of a time. He had been instinctively fleeing when he had heard the shriek and turned around to see Yuma falling from the sky, and decided to see if there was anything he could do for the one who had saved him. He walked into the park clearing - the boy who had saved him was impaled a short distance in front of him, behind him Yuma was writhing in agony, missing a wing and with a sword planted directly in her back. Yuma terrified him. She had outright tried to kill him after toying with his heart directly for her own amusement. But some part of him still felt an attachment to her. He shook his head, he knew that there was someone here who deserved whatever aid he could give them. He sighed when he realized the boy was long past saving. _I wish he didn't have to die_ , he thought.

A red pentagram surrounded by a circle appeared near him, and he was flabbergasted when Rias Gremory from school stepped forward. "What is your wish?" She asked calmly, somehow ignoring the scene around her. It seemed oddly rehearsed, with her red hair flaring out behind her.

At this point, Raynare was little more than a creature of instinct. She felt the presence of a kind known as enemy and immediately attempted to flee into the air. When that proved ineffective due to her lack of a wing, she began to run on her legs, shedding ineffectual tears.

"Please, save him, Gremory" Issei begged, pointing to the young youth impaled on the light spear. Rias' eyes widened when she caught sight of him, then opened further upon seeing the scene around her, the motion of the fleeing fallen angel catching her sight. She itched to give pursuit but there really were more immediate concerns at the moment. Quickly, she calculated the price of the wish and was almost baffled. "The price is that you become a member of my peerage." She murmured to Issei. "Agreed, whatever that is" was Issei's extremely rapid reply. It was clear Issei had no idea what that was or of the implications of his agreement, but it could be sorted out later.

Rias leaned over Shirou, pausing to remove the spear. She stared at the wound in amazement. Devils were highly sensitive to the flow of magic. The wound appeared to be closing up, but too slowly to save him. His body was absorbing the mana in the air, but it clearly wasn't transferring rapidly enough to save him. Rias frowned, it was possible that he could be saved without utilizing her last piece. Either way, she did prefer for someone to have a say in the matter, but in the matter of Issei she wasn't permitted to bring in those without knowledge of the arcane and her others had all been without the possibility of her granting them one. _Maybe he'll be different, she thought_. She stilled her motions, moving her face close to the wound. Inwardly she focused, gathering her own energy. Loosely she exhaled it, saturating the air around the wound with mana. She stared in almost disbelief as the wound began to rapidly close. It paused about a third of the way closed before it had consumed the energy in the air around it. She repeated the process four times, and stared at the double scar that was now present. His previous wound had not been exactly identical, but it had been very close. He had somehow lived through this process before, was all she could think. His heart wasn't beating, but that wasn't honestly a huge surprise, and was easily fixed with a brief jolt of power directly over top of the organ.

The process of healing the wound had taken perhaps fifteen seconds and been far too easy for someone who had appeared to be no more than an ordinary human to her senses. That he had defeated (or almost defeated, her mind idly corrected, remembering the fleeing fallen) a fallen angel was a tremendous accomplishment no matter the magic or circumstances involved. She was going to have to keep a very close eye on him in the future, and her mind immediately began to ponder ways that she could do so.

A/N : So I altered the fight with Raynare and Shirou some, as some of the criticism was very valid and needed. Kanshou and Bakuya should not have broken to a light spear - when you try to combine two universes you get some problems with conflicting canon, but that one is pretty clear. For what it's worth, if dxd and fsn directly contradict then I'll follow fsn, but it shouldn't really be an issue. Also, I actually ran this through a spell check this time and edited it for minor grammar. Before was literally the roughest of drafts, I actually have an idea where this story is going now.

For new readers - This is fate Shirou.


	2. Chapter 2

The day before, Fuyuki City.

Rin Tohsaka sighed as she stared at the sight before her. Shirou Emiya's house was clean. This was normal. What was not normal was that it seemed unnaturally clean. Even the kitchen looked as though no one had ever touched it. It was abnormal for the house of someone who was normally rather devoted to cooking. Intellectually Rin knew the likely cause. It had been a month since Illyasviel von Einzburn had died. Shirou had almost stopped attending school entirely, and when he did large, dark bruises were present under his eyes. It was clear he was stretching himself far too thin, but Rin had no idea what the third rate magus could possibly be expending that much effort on without having drawn her notice. After the grail war the two of them had mostly fallen out of contact, though that was more due to her actions than his. She genuinely did not want to get him further involved in the world of magecraft when he legitimately did not seem as though he had the capacity for traditional magecraft - pursuit of that route was something she felt could only introduce harm to his life, with little to no reward. He was just as likely to advance his capabilities in his tiny workshop as in the Clocktower, with a far lesser chance of being dissected due to idle curiousity. In her view, it was an act of kindness. She knew her degree of protectiveness of him was rather irrational for a magus, but the end result was that the safest course of action for all involved was for her to be distant from him. The last she had heard of his plans he was content to patiently wait to die for the chance to meet his lover. She had done her best to just ignore him and put him out of her mind, regardless of how intimately they may have known one another in the past.

The reason she was here in Shirou's house was that she had had an encounter with a rather panicked Sakura at school. She had never thought that Sakura would approach her willingly, but she was well aware of the depth of feelings the girl had for the redheaded fool, and had pretty much immediately guessed that he was the reason for her worry. The largest surprise had been how filled with despair Sakura had seemed- it was clear that the girl had tried and failed, many times, to help Shirou, before she had approached Rin out of desparation. She told herself her unacknowledged obligations to Sakura were the reason for her visit, not any lingering feelings she may have had.

She had knocked on the door and no one had answered, so she had entered alone. She walked through the almost eerily empty house, searching through each room individually. Illya's room was a surprise. It seemed as though it was the one place the almost manical cleaning of the rest of the house had gone untouched. She shuddered. Frankly, it was a little creepy, but she knew grief affected people oddly. She still had no idea why Shirou had so rapidly developed a sense of attachment to someone he had barely known. She sensed a burst of prana coming from his workshop and went to investigate.

Rin opened the door to the workshop to see Shirou singlemindedly focused on a sword in front of him. He laid it to one side, only to immediately summon a new one. If she had been a better magus, she would probably have dissected him by now, she mused idly as she watched him work. Something occurred to her - surely she had tripped his bounded fields and noticed her approach... but she hadn't felt any be tripped. Her eyes then narrowed on the pile of swords surrounding Shirou. There was almost no rhyme or reason to the projections, all of them were deadly implements but it seemed as though he were summoning them at random. There was a dull, rusted kukri laying next to a gleaming katana. She was astonished at the amount he had beside him... even if he were summoning them as rapidly as possible, in the grail war he had never managed even a low level, mundane projection for close to this period of time. As she opened her mouth to speak his process immediately altered into something different, and she decided to observe and possibly gather clues as to what he had been doing for the past few weeks. Her eyebrows shot up when he opened his mouth and began to speak the words of the most famous sword.

"Ex-cal-" A massive surge of prana was gathering in front of him. How had she not felt this? It was of such quantity that Rin was sure that she could have felt it from her home. What was more, Rin was sure that he was going to fail. Even without Gaia's resistance to the creation of a wholly unnatural _duplicate_ of a legendary artifact, there was very little in the way of progress.

A vague outline, almost of wireframes had gathered in front of Shirou. Rin desperately wanted to stop him, but did not dare interrupt the procedure for fear of it exploding completely out of his control. Shirou's lips parted to intone the next syllable of the word. The vague outline he had been holding in his hands exploded in a rush of energy, blood began rushing from his nose, his eyes rolled backwards, and he collapsed forwards, and would almost surely have cut himself on his many gathered swords had Rin not hurried forward and stopped his fall.

Rin had her suspicions.

Shirou awoke to the sight of an angered Rin Tohsaka staring down at him. He vaguely recalled that he had been practicing his magecraft, reached too far, and collapsed. It had happened before, many times, and it would happen again. Rin being there was unexpected though.

Rin looked down at him and commented "Shirou you're an idiot. Are you so desparate to throw your life away that you'll try to play with forces clearly beyond your control?"

"I wasn't trying to kill myself." Shirou instinctively responded. "It's simply the fastest way to achieve my goal. I need my magecraft to be better in order to be a hero."

"That's very well, but excalibur? I know there's no way that you can project that. The 'other' you did just fine with Kanshou and Bakuya, why didn't you use them?" Rin replied.

"I actually did start with them. Every day I've been working up to a more powerful noble phantasm after practicing my normal projections for hours." Shirou said calmly.

His calmness on the subject was maddening to Rin. She couldn't understand it, and being unable to understand something had generally made her feel stupid. However, in this case she knew her lack of understanding stemmed from the underlying issues of Shirou.

"Have any of these failed on you before? I would have sensed if you had tried Excalibur before now, but have any of them failed before now?" Rin demanded. She was afraid of the answer.

"Yes, but none of it was life threatening, so there wasn't a problem. The worst time only knocked me unconscious for a few hours before today." Shirou responded, exactly as calm.

Rin sighed. She understood why Sakuya had approached her now. The boy she loved had been slowly killing himself in front of her with her powerless to help. Unfortunately, Rin was not sure how to be more effective than Sakura at this. It seemed as though when the two people he had cared about more than others had left him, Shirou had decided to revert to wholly unhealthy behavior. Perhaps it was because he felt like seeing one of them would occur only after death, he just seemed to place even less value on his life than he had before. She resolved to try something that she would not have thought she would try before she had had this conversation.

"Will you please stop Shirou?" She asked politely. When Shirou's response was to stare at her blankly rather than to remark on how unusual of a request that was for her to make, she knew there was nothing he could do. If Rin had been angry earlier in this conversation, she was positively incensed by the lack of response. "Fine. See what I care!" She yelled as she stomped out the door. She ran to her house, tears blurring her vision. When Rin arrived at her house, slid to the floor, finally allowing herself to break down in tears.

AN:

This is the last we'll see of the non-shirou fate characters, unfortunately. I like them all. But that's way too much to manage. Needed to give a glimpse of what Shirou had been up to.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: While part of this is the same as the original scene I had with Zelretch, the majority of it was rewritten entirely.

That was weird, Shirou thought. He hadn't seen Rin outside of school in months. He was focused entirely into turning himself into the best sword imaginable. He was not sure what the value of a human was, but he instinctively knew what the value of a sword was. It was easy for his mind to quantify his surroundings when he broke them down into swords. His thinking had always been strange, but since he had lost Saber it had been like gray scale at first. Illya had cheered him up and given him a purpose. He was going to save Illya, no matter what. He had put his all into it, studying whatever obscure texts he could get his hands on, listening to whatever rumors he could. He had avoided the direct route of the Clock Tower because Illya had told him she would have known if the Clock Tower had something on the topic, but that she had been totally unable to interact with the rest of the world for most of her life. So it was there he directed his efforts. Illya had told him not to worry about it, to just enjoy the time he had with her. He had tried, and frequently he had genuinely enjoyed her company. It had made it all the more cruel when she had passed away, with him no closer to finding a way to help her than before.

Shirou looked up from where he was sitting in alarm. He felt an immensely powerful presence emanating from his house. It smelt of power and blood and ozone and metal and time and - he had to ignore his sense of the power- it was far too much. He stood and left the workplace, readying a trace in his hands, though he knew that anything he could summon would be practically useless if this were a conflict. When he opened the door he was surprised to see a middle aged man with a gray beard sitting at the table sipping on one of his cups of tea.

"I hope you don't mind" The man murmured. "I helped myself to some refreshments while you were otherwise occupied."

Shirou lowered his hands to his side, hoping that this could be resolved without a conflict. There was one important thing to be resolved first, though. "Um, who are you?"

"Ah, my apologies. My name is Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg. I believe you may have heard of me?" Zelretch said with an easy smile.

"I'm sorry, I haven't." Shirou replied.

"You must not have been educated very thoroughly on matters of mage craft." The blunt comment was eased by the friendly way in which Zelretch spoke it. "Do you know of the second true sorcery?"

"Yes, the kaleidoscope? Though I must admit I'm not very clear on what exactly it does aside from involving parallel universes." Shirou answered.

"Not quite, boy, but close. It would be more accurate to say parallel worlds. Just so you're aware, I am the sorcerer of the second true magic." Zelretch stated with calm, quiet authority lacing his tone.

"What does that have to do with me?" Shirou asked bluntly. Diplomacy was not something he had ever been said to have been talented at. Zelretch laughed openly at his question in surprise.

"Why, nothing and everything. As you're in one right now, there're many others of you in others." Zelretch shook his head, intent on redirecting the focus of the conversation into the one that he had intended. "How different do you think parallel worlds are from each other?" He inquired softly.

Shirou paused, almost afraid of it being a trick question. His mind flashed momentarily to a sea of swords, endless in his vision, like a moment from a dream. "I have no idea." He replied. "Then you're more accurate than anyone at the Clock Tower on the matter." Zelretch replied. "The truth is even I am not sure of the answer to that question. Periodically I find new worlds and investigate them. It's not purely idle curiosity; there is an element of academic knowledge and power to be gained from the universes. I can see what the outcome of a particular choice is in one and apply it to another."

"There is one underlying trait, if you will - each universe I have knowledge of has been useful to me, even if only as a passing moment of hilarity, but most have had far more meaning than that. Some of them I've done nothing more than harvest knowledge, and some I have ended up moving a person for one reason or another" Here he paused for emphasis. "I recently encountered a new category of worlds. I have been able to garner some knowledge from them but when I attempted to visit them..." Zelretch sipped at his tea, eyes flashing with some strong emotion. "I was rebuffed. Violently. You do not know of me, but it is no exaggeration to say that the number of worlds with beings that could rebuff me in such a manner are vanishingly small. I was rebuffed by a Great Red Dragon. A behemoth who was acting like a guard dog!" Zelretch's eyes began to shine more intensely. "So I have entered into something of a cold war with him. I am going from universe to universe and throwing magus at him in hopes of weakening him sufficiently for myself to overpower him." Shirou was nonplussed. He still had no idea what he had to do with what was sounding ever more like the rantings of a madman. Zelretch sipped quietly at his tea as Shirou stared at him.

"Why do such a thing?" Shirou asked.

Zelretch glanced to the side and quietly stated, "Because my attempt to do it personally failed. He was even able to wound me."

"I mean, why bother with the dragon at all?" Shirou was still slightly confused.

"For the simple reason that there is knowledge to be obtained beyond it" Zelretch stated as if it were obvious. "Did your father teach you nothing of magi, boy?" He asked of Shirou incredulously.

"He tried to teach me as little as possible," Shirou answered tersely. Zelretch took another sip of tea, savoring the taste. The silence stretched to an uncomfortable length.

"What does this have to do with me?" until Shirou finally broke it.

"Shirou Emiya. I must know what is in those universes. I've been attempting to get a mere eye within them which I can see through mystically but even that has failed." Zelretch clarified at Shirou's somewhat baffled look, remembering that the boy had attested to little knowledge of magecraft. "By mere eye I am referring to a person carrying a circuit tuned specifically for that purpose."

"So far every magus I have thrown through has died almost instantly," Zelretch answered. "Except for you. And i threw every member of the Clock Tower I could get my hands on in at least one universe. There have been two alternate versions of you I have tried so far. After I realized the first had lived, I placed a spell on the body of the second so that he could serve as my eyes. I wanted to know if there was some weakness hidden away behind the great dragon and whatever window I could get into that world at all would be helpful."

Here Zelretch paused, clearly in thought.

"You must understand, boy, that I will win this war of attrition with the dragon. I have nigh infinite time and resources on my side. However if there is nothing but a cold dead rock behind him I may dedicate less focus to the task."

"So you're sending me to a different universe in order to save the life of a dragon I would never encounter?" Shirou asked, half hopefully.

"Make no mistake - I will kill that thing and drag its corpse into my lab for dissection, boy, no matter how long it takes." The force of Zelretch's emotions was such that it was affecting the ambient prana near him, he finished his words in a hiss "It _wounded_ me. Do you have any idea how long it has been since I was actually wounded?"

Shirou was shaken; the gathered power in that moment had been enough to remind him forcibly of a servant unleashing their noble phantasm. He had no idea who this man really was, even after being given his titles, but he knew that he would have less than no hope in a conflict with him.

Zelretch took a deep breath and another sip of tea, calming himself.

"If you prefer to think of it this way, I have held off from some of my more destructive abilities in the case that there existed something worthwhile past his guard. Your life isn't being used to save the dragons, but it could potentially save anyone who is beyond him."

"Did the other Shirous agree to this?" Shirou asked, somewhat incredulously.

"One did, I didn't bother asking the first, he was in a batch of Clock Tower magi." Zelretch replied. "Frankly I'm only asking because it lowers the chance of rejection of the grafting I'm going to do to you."

"Graft? Like a circuit?" Shirou asked, his mind in a whirl

"Not exactly, as there is no real benefit to you like there would be with a normal circuit, which allows me to bypass some of the dangers of the process. Essentially it would be a circuit that is inaccessible to your own magic." Zelretch answered. When he noticed the hesitant look on Shirou's face he continued "And I must warn you, if you disagree I may use the nearest magus, one Tohsaka Rin, in your place. After all, I do need to test the efficacy of the technique anyways, and she can give me some good data on the Great Red and his combat ability even if she dies instantly. The coldness in his tone alarmed Shirou. How had Zelretch known of Rin was his initial thought, followed shortly by worried concern that he had.

"Do you agree?" Zelretch asked in a voice of ice, finality in his tone. It was clear to Shirou that Zelretch was through with the conversation, and that his only real choice was whether he gave consent. Shirou thought about it. There was honestly nothing really tying him to this realm, he had mild affection for Sakura and Tohsaka but he would prioritize his own ideals before either of them. what he truly cared about was almost forever out of his reach, and whether he gave Zelretch the go ahead or not didn't really matter as to whether he could encounter her again. Shirou sighed, briefly lost in thoughts of a green eyed girl, and finally agreed.

"I don't think the process is really going to be pleasant at all though." He mused aloud idly.

Zelretch smiled. "Then let us begin."

Implanting the scrying circuit hadn't felt particularly good, but Shirou thought the process of creating circuits from his nerves may have actually felt worse. Zelretch said he had lost vision from his previous attempts almost instantly from when they entered the dimensional gap, so he had gone and altered his spell into a form that was more than merely skin deep, a scrying circuit. A secondary concern was that it would let Zelretch observe some of the great dragon's combat abilities. He saw Shirou off with a slight smirk less than a day after their initial meeting. Shirou had put his meager tools into a bag and readied himself to leave his life forever.

Shirou closed his eyes inside of the inverted summoning circle and waited for Zelretch to finish his spell. Upon completion, he would be leaving his world forever. Zelretch had made it very clear that he doubted that he would make it past the Great Red within Shirou's lifetime, and he couldn't imagine that there would be an individual with equivalent powers beyond the Great Red. He was only able to maintain his composure and not beg to remain by focusing on the possibility that by doing this be was saving far more people than he would ever have been able to otherwise. He nodded to himself, determining to keep that foremost in his mind as he felt his body wavering, then a sense of great nausea washed over him and he opened his eyes to see a tiny object on the horizon. That has to be the dragon, he thought.

He focused upon the being, determined not to be caught by surprise. Shirou hadn't quite understood Zelretch's description of the beast as the Great Red Dragon. When he focused his vision fully on the distant beast drawing closer he began to comprehend. There was an insane urge in him to submit to its greatness, to worship its redness, to be terrified of its draconian nature. The concepts were projected by its very existence, coming across on more than just a visual medium. Looking at he somehow felt how red it was with his skin and heard it with his ears. When be realized just how far away it was when he began to feel this concept he became truly frightened in a way he hadn't since the trail war had ended.

As it drew closer he felt its presence turn from undeniable to oppressive, then finally it became flat out painful. His skin was tearing, coming off in flakes and blood was rising into the air around him. He was shrieking in agony as his skin tore, barely able to understand what was happening. He tried to flood his body with prana and reinforce his body to prevent the deterioration, but his efforts were like a speck of dust in a tornado. His thoughts were becoming more sluggish; he felt every speck of being in his body being unmade. He was unraveling, he thought. At the moment when he was sure his consciousness would end completely, he felt his body flooded by an energy he only dimly recognized as Avalon's. The mere presence of this dragon would have rewritten his form into one of a nature with his presence - an illusion. Avalon resisted this active redefinition of his body, stubbornly maintaining his form against all hope and odds.

The dragon was surprised. Usually lesser non dragons vanished in his mere presence, and he had suffered a great flood of hostile humans lately that had a similar presence to this boy. This one wasn't unaffected but he sniffed the air. He did smell vaguely of a dragon. He must be under the protection of one, and the scent grew stronger the more he suffered, and he was reminding him less and less of the ones that had attempted to harm him. The one ability that could never be sealed from him was that to sense dreams. Rather than just disposing of this human as random trash, the great red decided to peek at his dream. It was so idiotic he almost laughed, what was a person so old doing with such a childish dream? But the conviction was very strong and it wasn't likely that one such as this would be a source of harm, and he failed to see how preventing his now known opponent from using more dangerous forms of magic to be a bad thing (as Shirou's reason for his latest dream of saving people had made itself known). He forcibly pulled his aura into his body and roared, opening a crack in the dimensional gap. He carefully nudged the trembling boy into the portal and took off, resuming his natural flying patrol.

Shirou lay on the ground. He was an utter wreck. Zelretch hadn't warned him that surviving the dragon would be that painful, but to be fair it hadn't sounded as though he had any knowledge at all of what the others had experienced. He groaned then tilted his head up to survey his surroundings. He was in an alley beside some restaurant. He wanted to keep laying there but he knew he had to check his condition and was vaguely surprised when he was able to sit up without very many problems. Only then did he realize something somewhat pressing - while Avalon had preserved his body, it had done nothing for his clothes. He groaned in agony as he flooded his overworked circuits and slowly manifested some rather shoddy looking clothing. He had no idea how long it would last for but wandering around Japan naked would not go over well, he knew. Or at least the Japan he knew, he thought as he looked around, remembering that he was in a totally different world. He was definitely glad that his presence was going to keep Zelretch from potentially destroying some innocents, he thought as he glanced at some of the people around who seemed exactly like humans from his home world.

His first course of business was definitely going to be finding a source of income, he thought. Shirou began going over a list of his marketable skills, which mostly came out to cooking and repair work, only to sigh in exasperation as he felt a wave of killing intent coming from a nearby park. He really wanted this day to end was his last thought before his mind became solely focused on combat

AN :

While I really liked about this scene originally was Zelretch, but it really went off the rails at the end, so I thought about it for a week and then rewrote it to be a bit more… sane. The anon reviewer Kiritsugu had some excellent pointed criticism on the matter that I tried to keep in mind, so much thanks to him. I kept the parts I felt were strongest and redid what I felt were the weaker sections.

The scene with Great Red may be a bit confusing, as it isn't really in DxD canon, it's more my personal interpretation of what happens when you mix contradictory systems and to convey just how massive the power differential is here– Red's very presence means Shirou has to alter a little bit, so that he may appear to be from that universe on a fundamental level, and it hurts like hell to change that much. A magus with sufficent skill and reserves can stand in the Great Red's presence put up a fight, but shirou is untalented and doesn't have particularly impressive reserves anyways. As zelretch alluded to in the chapter, if he goes all out he may win vs the Great Red but he's not sure just how much will be destroyed in the process.

I split the chapters as this is new material, going in a pretty different direction, and I'm posting a newer chapter post Raynare right now.


	4. Chapter 4

After Combat with Raynare

Shirou jerked to awareness in a bed in what appeared to be a school nurse's office. He could smell several magical beings presence in the near past and overall there was a definitive sense of the presence of magic in the area. However, actively there were only two near him currently. The first girl had long red hair, gigantic breasts, and smelled vaguely of brimstone and menace. The last meant that he needed to take her far more seriously than her appearance would have him ordinarily believe, but he was no stranger to the necessity of this considering some of his past associations with Rin, Illya, and even Sakura.

"I expected you to be out for longer. I'm not really sure why I thought that, seeing as most humans don't recover at all from that kind of puncture wound." Shirou winced at her words, but answered her unspoken question cautiously - no one needed knowledge of Avalon, it was one of the few lessons on security Saber had successfully beaten into his head.

"I'm a bit different from most humans." He decided to try and leave it at that, and threw a question at her to get her off track by asking her an uncomfortable question point blank "Pardon me, but what are you?"

She giggled a bit and asked him how he had known she wasn't human. Seeing no reason to lie, Shirou told her "Your scent."

She flushed and stuttered a little in reply, not sure if the boy was merely insulting her in a very roundabout manner or if he had a deeper meaning in mind.

A titter from the corner drew Shirou's attention to the other occupant of the room. It was another being with the appearance of a teenage girl (after Illya he was being cautious in evaluating magical beings ages, though the redhead was acting the age of her appearance) but she was dark haired and smelled less strongly of brimstone and more of ozone and bitterness. "What does Rias smell like?" She asked after her fit had ended.

Shirou realized his social faux pas at this point and felt the need to correct the misunderstanding quickly lest it devolve into something further. "Oh, I detect magic through my sense of smell. She smells like brimstone mainly. Who are you two anyways?"

Rias directed a glare at the once again laughing girl and introduced herself as Rias Gremory and her friend as Akeno Himejima.

"And we are devils" she finished her introduction with a flourishing of her small, bat like wings. It may have looked impressive if it hadn't knocked a jar of swaps off the counter of the nurse's counter, resulting in a shattering of glass.

Rias flushed with embarrassment once again. Looking to redirect the conversation away from herself, she asked Shirou what he was doing in Kuoh city, and how he had held off the fallen angel.

Shirou saw no reason not to answer her honestly, so he replied "I was looking for employment, I held her off with magecraft, and she was a fallen angel? I was unaware those existed. I presume you mean you are devils of the Christian faith then?"

Rias was rather surprised. "I guess I must thank fate that you saved my newest piece, but I thought our existence was common knowledge to most magicians"

"Um, even by the standards of my home I wasn't considered more than third rate as a magus, my father died before he could fully teach me" Shirou answered hesitantly, trying to keep this simple.

"You're an apprentice magus?" Rias asked, thinking carefully of the politics that could become involved around the human mage societies. She realized that she would have to tread lightly and sent a message to Sona to join her in the room. She knew the girl would be there shortly, she took her responsibilities on such matters seriously and a rogue mage could be a very large threat both politically and physically.

"Not really, I had someone fill in some gaps later on but she always said I was hopeless at magecraft." Shirou answered.

"Your master said you were hopeless at magecraft?" Akeno asked, surprised. It was rare for a master to be so openly cruel to their apprentice.

"Well we were focused around more… pressing issues for the most part. My lack of talent wasn't really always the focus, and she wasn't technically my master." Shirou defended Rin instinctively.

"It is very unusual for a mage to not be apprenticed in some fashion" Akeno stated, suspicion in her tone.

"Well, uh, according to her, I was only suited to one style of magecraft and pretty much useless at the rest. I don't doubt that if she had been able to teach me more she would have, even if her methods could be rather harsh." Shirou finished thoughtfully.

Rias and Akeno exchanged a look. It wasn't entirely uncommon for a human magus to run away from an overly harsh master and claim an elaborate story to avoid going back into their clutches or avoid the various associations that would inevitably return them to said master.

"Is there a way for you to contact her, your most recent Maste- teacher." Rias corrected her mistake before finishing the word, wincing because she was afraid it would bring up a sore point.

Shirou wanted to make a noise in frustration when he realized his words could be mistaken for having been rejected as an apprentice by Rin.

"She's not my master, and no, she's in a different universe entirely right now"

When he looked up the two of him were dying him look he was insane.

"She must have been an awful master for you to come up with such an extreme story to stay away from her." Rias said, pity in her eyes.

"No, the worst she ever did was convince me she was trying to kill me, and that really was for my own good." Shirou stated evenly, trying to end this misunderstanding before it got further out of hand.

Twin exclamations of sorrow met his statement, sorrow that someone's self-esteem had been broken to such a low level.

"But really, I was sent to this universe by this strange old man that I had never seen before." Shirou realized how ridiculous that sounded out loud even as he said it.

"We believe you." Rias nodded. "We believe that you believe that, but it's safe here." She then grabbed his head in a tight hug, even as he flailed, trying to get free. Shirou would never have thought that he would be pitied by a devil. Or that she would be ridiculously strong. He was truly trying to get free and it was making no difference, honestly it was kind of panic-inducing to be grabbed like this.

Just when Shirou felt his consciousness start to fade, two things occurred simultaneously. The door slammed open, he heard a new voice shout "Rias! What's this about a magus?" and his projected clothing fell apart into motes of prana as his concentration fully faltered.

After much confusion, Sona stood in the room rubbing her temple. Shirou had been sent to change into a random patient's gown that had been stored in the office after he had stutteringly explained that it was all an accident, but to please never hug him like that again, as he had been afraid for his life. She knew that she Rias tended to do whatever she wanted, but this was pushing well beyond her comfort zone.

"You want to keep a rogue magus at Kuoh, one who claims that he is from a different universe entirely?" Sona asked in a pleading tone, hoping she had misheard Rias earlier.

"Yes." Rias answered without hesitating.

"Do you even have plans to make him a member of your peerage?"

"Even if I don't you can't send him back to his old master." Akeno nodded along with her King, she was in full agreement. "The way he spoke of her was so dead and matter of fact, it was like he was convinced everything she was doing was in his best interest!"

"What if he's not lying?" Sona asked, her tone harsher than intended.

"What, you think his master really was treating him in his best interest?" Rias was puzzled a bit by the question, though she knew it was a possibility that both her and Akeno had badly misinterpreted his remarks.

"No, about being from a different universe. You know who has to be told about either of these things, correct?" Sona's voice was quiet as she spoke. She had already accepted the outcome.

Rias expression altered to one of faint horror and sympathy as it dawned on her. "Your sister. And while a rogue magus would ordinarily be a minor footnote on a report she probably doesn't read, since it is in our area – "

"It's an excuse for Serafall to come, and she's completely within her rights." Sona finished for her.

"Can't we hold back on mentioning it to her for at least a little while until I get Issei used to my peerage?" Rias begged, she didn't hate Serafall but she didn't want her newest recruit to get strange ideas about devils.

"If it weren't for his bizarre claim about being from another universe having even the slightest possibility of truth, I would say that we don't even tell her about the rogue magus, honestly, but… I don't like it at all. Why else would he have literally no clothing or identification in this era of time? Unless he's the magus equivalent of our perverted trio I can't see him developing such a perfectly timed mishap. Which I grant is a possibility that I would never have thought of before meeting those three, but I will err on the side of caution for now… which unfortunately means informing Serafall." Sona declared with finality.

AN

So this story has been heavily revised/edited and certain portions of it were largely rewritten so far. It's now in second draft rather than the "barely glanced at" unedited first draft status it had been. When taking feedback it's important to listen to it – I got a LOT of feedback about issues with the fight with Raynare and Shirou, and while the fight itself wasn't changed too much, the backstory behind it was and what I felt to be the most glaring, important reason for criticism was removed – there was no overall plot reason for kanshou and bakuya to shatter and it did violate fsn lore, after much research on the matter. Raynare still beats Shirou but there is an additional reason for his poor performance written, he comes into that fight exhausted.

This is what I try to keep in mind when I write, and when I read ff too - is there a chance that this could happen? If the answer is yes, then there's a fsn universe for it. I judged that there was a possibility of the events turning out as I wrote. If I had deemed it completely impossible, I wouldn't have written it down and just left it in my head to laugh at.

This was why I altered the noble phantasm behavior- there is no universe in which that should have happened. It breaks suspension of disbelief once you're aware of the canon of it.

So, thanks for the criticism and reviews everyone, it's been great. I haven't honestly gotten a review that I deemed useless, though granted several of them were less polite than in person, they were also far more useful than many I've gotten face to face. If someone thinks something sucks and they tell you why it sucks, that's still good feedback. If it's easily fixable, you may as well fix it. Even more so if you agree with their reasoning. At least that's always been my philosophy.

This story came together better than I thought it would have, to be honest. I spent several hours today writing and editing, hopefully it's a bit better than before, though it's still not exactly fully planned or plotted out. I'm not sure if I should restructure the story further or post it as a different story entirely now that it's taken on a life of its own somewhat. I'm still getting a grip on writing the DxD characters, for some reason they're really hard to write without everything turning into a farce.

I don't intend to follow precise dxd canon events, as should be clear from this chapter. Shirou himself directly causing changes is pretty unlikely though – he's not really stronger than any of the dxd devils as a vanilla human. Note, he will not be a member of Rias' peerage, other than that, I'm currently unsure as to what he eventually does.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Sona sighed, she wasn't entirely serious about having to inform her sister but she had wanted to impress upon Rias that her impulsive actions could have rather unfortunate effects for them. It was a long point of contention between the two; both had wildly different approaches to life that were exemplified very clearly by their method of acquiring peerage pieces. Most of Rias' pieces had been products of happenstance and impulsiveness, while Sona had mostly acquired hers through careful planning. Both methods had their merits, she would admit, though she still favored her own peerage's strength. Sona had not been lying about having to inform Serafall, however her current plan was to put a note about this stray magician on a page 4 footnote of section C of a report. Serafall would notice it eventually, but it gave Sona a bit of time to figure out how to handle having her sister visit her. Sona mused idly on the subject for a while, though she suspected there was no way to make a visit from her sister pleasant for herself. Her concentration was broken by Akeno asking Rias a question, "Shouldn't we check on Issei?" That seemed to remind Rias of something, and she told began to tell Sona about her newest pawn and how she had acquired him. Sona had briefly wondered why Rias would need to check on a member of the perverted trio, but her attention was rapidly over taken by a different part of the described encounter "The magician successfully fought off a fallen angel?" Her headache was going to worsen if she had understood Rias' description of the events. Rias promptly answered her, "In a way, his injury was worse than the fallen's, but fortunately I was able to save his life." Something was odd about this, Sona thought. Akeno tugged on Rias' shoulder, getting her attention, "We should really check on Issei" Rias nodded and the two of them left the room. Sona realized what had been troubling her the instant they left the room - she would have expected Rias to add the magician to her peerage, though she had understood the reluctance to add multiple new members at once, as even a single additional member was a great deal of added responsibility.

Shirou pressed his face against the mirror in the nearest bathroom to the nurse's office. He had changed into the gown shortly after entering, but he was trying to calm himself. He could tell he was still rather massively disoriented from his experience with the great red, he had barely recovered to functional from that before being thrown into a vicious death match with an inhuman creature. Being thrown into a rather odd situation with self-identified devils immediately after hadn't helped matters. Shirou would never have revealed as much information as he had to Gremory earlier if he had been in a normal frame of mind, but it had been something of a train wreck of a conversation that had just kept snowballing further into something of a disastrous farce. At least he hadn't really revealed any of his combat abilities to her, in case he had to fight to get free of the building.

He gripped the sink, feeling his arms starting to tremble and shake. He knew it was post battle jitters and would wear off soon, but it was the first moment he had really had to himself in a while. Shirou wasn't so naive as to think he wasn't being monitored via some mystic means by the beings he had spoken with earlier, but he was going to take whatever respite he was given. He closed his eyes and slowly focused on what he knew about his current situation in an attempt to calm. To his dismay, he really knew nothing beyond it seemed like he was in Japan, at least one human existed other than himself, and there were some devils around who resembled teenaged girls. His projections had seemed slightly off as well, though they had still functioned - a projected set of clothing would never have deteriorated so rapidly or required such extensive focus in his home world. Perhaps Gaia had a stronger influence in this world? That would be unfortunate if true. Although evaluating the facts he knew was rather disheartening, it did set clear what exactly he needed immediately: more information. Shirou nodded, having successfully cleared his head and decided on a course of action, and went back to the room he had woken up in. While he had no doubt that beings identifying as devils could prove rather problematic, he had not gotten any sort of negative or hostile impression from any of those who had been present earlier. He had, however, felt that they were definitely rather dangerous beings, and resolved to keep on his guard around them.

The door opened as soon as he raised his hand to knock. Sona Sitri, if he remembered correctly, stood there. "I was just about to go looking for you" she told him. Shirou saw no signs of the two who had been there earlier. "Sorry. I needed a moment to clear my head... It isn't often that I wake up from nearly dying in that sort of situation." Sona nodded, it was a sensible enough course of action. "Would you answer some questions for me? You must understand there is some information I need to gather whenever a member of a... mystical faction arrives in my territory." Sona spoke with a clear, calm tone.

"You're the second owner?" Shirou blurted in surprise.

"I'm unfamiliar with that term" Sona admitted, "but my lack of familiarity with human Magus culture is fairly normal. They tend to be fairly secretive and reclusive."

"Um, at least where I'm from, I was under the impression that the mage who governed an area and made sure that magecraft stayed hidden from the general populace was known as a second owner." Sona's eyes flashed with a mild amount of pleasure, but after a moment it faded. "That reminds me of your... claim. We can come back to that later, however. Yes, Rias and I would share ownership of this city if you use that definition, though I assume from the way you spoke that it would only apply to humans?" Sona paused for Shirou to answer.

"I honestly wouldn't know, I barely knew of the nonhuman mage practitioners in my home, as I said before I'm very inexperienced as a Magus would go." Shirou spoke nonchalantly. He was hoping that by being free with information about himself he could get the same courtesy from Sona in regards to this world he found himself in. Sona nodded, almost as if she were confirming to herself that his information matched up with his earlier statements. "Regardless, you should understand that it is imperative for anyone in the position of Rias' or me to monitor our territory for potential threats. Rias does not think you are a threat." Here Sona's glasses flashed "I am not convinced." Her voice was clear, with no hesitation at all in voicing Shirou as a potential threat. "What are you doing in my territory?"

Shirou was somewhat taken aback by the abrupt shift in Sona's questioning of him, but he did understand her point of view on the matter. Rin had also gotten rather protective of her city and if they held equivalent positions it was a fairly understandable approach to an unidentified power. In fact, avoiding that hostility was a large part of why maguses actually ever bothered to inform the second owners. He could not exactly lie as earlier Rias had basically caught him off guard and hammered him with questions that had already revealed much of his background. Shirou was also aware that he was not a particularly skilled liar, but he could only hope she actually believed the truth. He did decide to selectively edit out Zelretch's motives, however. "I was sent to this world by a Magus on mine. He told me it was either me or one of my friends, and that while I would survive the journey she would not. I valued her life enough to make the journey. As far as I can tell it was random chance that I arrived in this area specifically."

Sona seemed displeased with his answer, but nodded grudgingly. "And what are your personal goals in being here?" Shirou quietly muttered his goal, but Sona's hearing easily picked up his words. One of Sona's eyebrows rose slightly. _Well_ , Shirou thought, _that's a better reaction than the outright laughter I usually get_.

Sona appeared deep in thought after his answer, so Shirou decided that this very well may be his best opportunity to get some answers. "Um... Is this world mostly made up of humans? I've seen far more nonhuman so far." Sona put her face in her hand and groaned. "You're making it nearly impossible for me not to contact my sister." Shirou was puzzled. Sona glared at him for a moment then clarified, "if you're truly of extraterrestrial origin then my sister has to be notified as she's the satan in charge of foreign relations. I would inform her if a foreign power was in this region regardless but it is starting to look as though you truly believe what you are saying and Rias' version of events is in fact, just a much more plausible alternative." Shirou had no idea what to make of any of that - her sister was Satan? "I will go over the history of humanity in a short while; it sounds like you've described a mostly parallel universe. Ordinarily i would delegate that task but I'm trying to decide just how urgently I need to contact my sister. But before that do you have any unrelated questions to ask of me?"

Shirou decided to focus on the other pressing issue he had - "May I setup a workshop somewhere in this area?" He requested in his most formal tone.

While the terminology was unfamiliar, Sona was able to guess his general meaning. "You mean a place for you to permanently practice magic?" At Shirou's nod, she shook her head. "No. You may not. Frankly I'm not sure I would give that kind of permission to anyone unless I'm required to due to a preexisting alliance." Sona's eyes took on a bit of a calculating look "however, you may temporarily practice magic so long as you only do so under supervision from a member of my peerage."

Shirou's hopes had fallen at first, though he understood her position. It honestly would not have stopped him from practicing magic; he had certainly done so without Rin's permission in the past. While he could save up money from working at part time jobs and leave the area, he had no way of knowing if other areas would be governed by openly hostile beings. When she finished her statement he was left with one question: "What is a peerage?" At that Sona had sighed and proceeded to answer some of Shirou's questions, she went into rather exhaustive detail if he asked about some point of human history but she was very vague when it came to facts relating to devil's or other mystical beings. Her peerage, she told him, consisted of devil's who served her.

While her evaluation of Shirou for potential magical energy was somewhat underwhelming, Sona saw no reason to throw away a potential resource, and She had wrung a large number of concessions from him in exchange for permissions that Rias likely would have freely granted. While it was a tad manipulative, she did not regret it. Really, it was more that she was doing all she could to contain the presence of this unknown mage. She possibly should have tried to draw him into a contract around her permission to practice magic, but she had feared that he would have merely declined the offer and wandered off. And if his claim was true and he had arrived in her territory, he definitely was going to be a headache for her sister. That thought gave Sona a tiny moment of vindictive glee, though not enough to outweigh her instinctive terror of her sister's presence. For now, she had offered Shirou a spare room at one of her properties in the city and was going to make certain members of her peerage kept a close eye on him. When she had asked him he had informed her he would be a third year student she had been pleased that there was an additional method to help keep him in line - She could only hope that he kept out of trouble for the day or two that it would take for her sister to read the report and make time in her schedule.

AN:

Everyone's favorite, exposition. Yay. This chapter came out differently than I thought it would and I'm not entirely happy with it and may revisit it in the future, as I've only done fairly minor editing. It's fairly necessary to setup the rest of the story, though. Oh, and Sona isn't evil or anything, just… cautious. And not really the biggest fan of Shirou's presence.


	6. Chapter 6 : Sticks and Stones

Chapter 6 Swords and Sticks

AN: I own neither Fate Stay Night or High School DxD

Shirou kept an observant eye out for home as Sona guided him to a large Japanese style house on the outskirts of Kuoh city. He sensed a great deal of ambient magic in the air as they moved through the city. It felt like he was at a confluence of ley lines, which was analogous to the city he had originally come from.

Speaking of which, one of the main differences Sona had noted was that there was no Fuyuki city here. The other major difference was that it seemed to be a few years later in history. Shirou had opted out of going into the mystical history of Fuyuki as it could easily have given Sona a mistaken impression of him and would require him to go into significantly more detail than he sensed she had patience for.

Something about the energy here seemed strange to him - it was like drinking exceptionally hard water after being used to drinking soft water all of his life. The air seemed overloaded with wildly varying flavors and scents.

Shirou could easily tell that the property they were approaching was surrounded by some truly powerful bounded wards. He doubted even Rin would have been able to manage their creation. He shuddered as they passed through them, he was could sense that had Sona not given him permission they would have mutilated him. The field was also a bit different, for all of its power it lacked the sophistication of any created by a Magus in his home world. It smelled of sulfur and a freezing wind to him, and those were not reassuring scents in the slightest.

"What's wrong?" Sona asked. Shirou freely answered, "I sensed that we passed a bounded field just now. I've had some bad experiences with them in the past and this one is rather strong."

"I'm impressed; I doubt the average mage would have noticed it so rapidly. It covers the property line exactly - if it extended further it wouldn't be quite as powerful, unfortunately. It was a concession my sister had me make in exchange for the level of independence I have." Sona commented in a conversational tone as they entered the house. His terminology was still unfamiliar to her, but it was easy enough for her to glean his meaning. She rapidly explained the layout of the house to him, informing him he had free access to his bedroom and the bathroom but he would be strictly supervised outside of that.

Normally she would have simply teleported him, but she was reluctant to reveal more of her abilities than necessary yet. She was also maintaining an eye on him to see if any of his reactions would lend further credence to his story. So far all she had determined was that he did indeed practice magic of some sort and had some sort of aptitude for sensing its presence.

Suddenly she realized why they had gotten some weird looks on the way and conjured some new clothes for him. She handed them to Shirou and told him to change with a blush. He left into a room to change.

Shirou emerged from the room feeling very glad to finally be properly clothed for the first time in what felt like forever. He was greeted by the sight of a full male school uniform in Sona's hands. "This is for tomorrow." She stated, shaking the clothes in her hands slightly to draw his attention.

Shirou blinked. He was rather... surprised. "You want me to go to school my first full day... here?" He said in a querulous tone.

Sona glared him forcefully enough that he took a step back. "I said. This is for tomorrow. Any questions?" Apparently, she took education rather seriously. Even for possibly extraterrestrial beings.

He sighed in acquiescence. "No. I assume the school is where we were just at?"

"Correct." Sona nodded with pleasure. "Now, while I granted you permission to use your magic temporarily, I do require you to demonstrate that your magic can be used without any negative repercussions to those around you before I grant you permission to use it around those besides me."

"Could I demonstrate it now?" Shirou wanted to get it out of the way as rapidly as possible - perhaps those around her would be more lax in their attentiveness.

Sona seemed momentarily surprised but voiced her assent without delay.

It had grown somewhat late by this time so her surprise wasn't really that unusual, but Shirou saw no harm in explaining himself. "I generally practice my magecraft around this time of night anyways."

Sona nodded, mentally reviewing which members of her peerage would be free around this time. She knew she could just place a familiar on the duty but they were unlikely to be able to restrain the Magus. Her evaluation of his potential had been on the low side, but it was more than enough of a match for any of her peerage's familiars.

Sona had chosen this property with a specific room in mind for Shirou to temporarily use for this purpose and she directed him to it and then watched as he sat on the ground cross legged in front of a table. She heard him mutter "Trace On" and felt a mass of energy coalesce in front of the redheaded youth.

There was a momentary surge of panic when she realized that he had summoned a weapon directly in her presence, and she leaped backwards, instinctively readying her own energies to annihilate the mage. Only the condition of Shirou kept her from launching an attack. He was gasping for breath, sweating profusely, and his focus was entirely on the weapon in front of him. Sona noted there was a brief flickering of it, as if it were flitting in and out of existence entirely. She knew conjuring was possible with conventional magic, but was somewhat confused by his choice of objects. It didn't seem the wisest thing to try to summon in front of her, as had she been a bit less observant she would definitely have killed him.

Shirou gasped heavily again, something was wrong. It felt both more and less difficult to utilize magecraft here. It felt far more natural to draw in prana, but utilizing it seemed to be a different story. Maybe if he used more prana? He focused more energy on the weapon, a simple short sword he'd seen that had no mystical connections whatsoever. It was a purely mundane weapon that had never been used. For some reason it felt far more difficult to summon than Kanshou and Bakuya had. He carefully poured more energy in, but the more he added the more unstable the creation was growing… he felt close to some tipping point, and wanted to press forward. His eyes popped open when he remembered that he had an audience and carefully willed his energy away.

He was carefully visually monitoring the blade as he lowered his active usage of prana. It slowly began flickering less, but for longer periods of time. Shirou had no idea what to make of this, other than that the rules of magic might be different here. He was only glad he had backed off before causing an explosion that would certainly have kept Sona from prohibiting him from using magic.

Sona had scrambled away, cursing as she felt the magic surge in front of her, then sighing in relief as it faded away. Shirou chuckled a little bit, rubbing the back of his head. "I'm still getting used to the way it works here, I guess."

"Why did you do summon a sword in front of me?" Sona asked, suspicion filling her words.

"Well, to be honest, my magic typically performs the best around swords. I didn't want to take any unnecessary chances and tried to do the easiest, most lowkey magic I could personally do. There are some other things I could do but I would have needed raw materials to do them, and" Shirou knocked on the table in front of him "I thought you might be annoyed if I accidentally turned this into kindling."

"Did it not occur to you that I might take the presence of a weapon in front of me as a threat?" His logic had disturbed Sona. It disturbed her because he had actually used logic to justify doing what was in her mind, an incredibly idiotic action. "No? It was just a generic sword, I wouldn't have thought I could hurt you with it, to be honest. I always thought devils would be stronger than humans."

Sona rubbed her head. She wasn't going to sit and describe the various strengths and weaknesses of her race to someone who she frankly had almost no reason to trust. She couldn't decide if his ignorance on this matter would be of more harm or use, and decided to leave it for in the morning.

"Just… give a warning if you're going to summon a sword in the future, alright?" Sona hoped he would take this message to heart.

She had observed his control of magic to be on the weak side, but his behavior in the face of an unwanted magical reaction actually worked in his favor – he had worked to untangle the admittedly complex interweaving once he had realized it was spiraling out of control, something that she herself had honestly struggled with in her youth – the impulse to overpower the spell to get it to work correctly was a struggle. Plus, his apparent inability to control magic well was something that made her feel a bit better about leaving him alone with other people.

"Don't use magic unless you're around members of the Occult Research Club or the Student council" She informed Shirou. She bid him goodnight and turned to leave, only to have Shirou call out and ask her if she knew what had happened to the boy from the day before. "Rias is taking care of him" She stated, and then continued on to her bed.

Shirou had been surprised, he had not expected permission granted so freely. He suspected that those she had specified were also Devils, so it probably wasn't really any increase in freedom. It had been a really long day, Shirou reflected as he got ready to sleep. He fell asleep almost immediately. Sona cautiously placed her familiar outside of Shirou's bedroom door, hoping that it was an unnecessary precaution.

The largest difference between his world and this one, Shirou reflected the next day, was the level of cellphone usage. Maybe it was just that he was a few years forward in time, but he wasn't entirely sure that was the case. Maybe the presence of magus families in Fuyuki had singlehandedly held back technological process. Recalling Rin's frustrations with technology, he wouldn't have been entirely surprised.

He had introduced himself in his class, his classmates had mostly reacted with the studied apathy generic to all high schools, and it had basically felt like a continuation of his time in Fuyuki. It felt so generic he was almost surprised. He did note the occasional presence of inhuman beings, but he could tell that none of them were on the level of either Rias Gremory or Sona Sitri. His largest measure of confusion came when he observed the utter normalcy with which either of those two participated in school work. There was no sign that either were anything other than very bright human students.

Shirou wondered if school was going to be entirely the same as it had been before as he went to the cafeteria. He wasn't exactly looking forward to the fairly mindless drudgery of schoolwork, but he much preferred it to the heart stopping terror of the Grail War.

He sat down with his lunch (Sona had told him not to worry about it, though he suspected it was just a further method of keeping him under control – a hungry magus would likely be a dangerous one) and began to dig into his food when he was approached by a brown haired devil. His eyes widened when he realized that he was the boy who he had saved yesterday… the one who had been a human. Shirou's shoulders slumped, thinking that he had failed at saving him. Then he was hit by a bit of confusion that the boy had become a devil, something he would never have even considered a possibility.

"Thanks for yesterday. Buchou told me that I was almost certainly a goner without your help. I heard that you're a transfer student. Lucky for me." The boy introduced himself as Issei Hyoudou, Shirou was still a bit confused, but returned the introduction politely and indicated that Issei could have a seat. He wanted to blurt out and ask the boy why he wasn't human anymore, but he was aware of their surroundings.

After the second sentence out of Issei's mouth was about the glory of breasts, he wished he had said anything at all to focus the conversation on a different topic. Then Issei asked him how the breasts here compared to the ones where he had been from.

When he found himself actually considering the question, Shirou began wondering if he was trapped in some weird hell-scape. Being interrogated by a teenaged devil on his interests the female body was something he would never have considered a possibility before this experience. He decided to gamble on a chance that he could redirect the boy's attention to a different line of conversation, he decided to actually answer the question.

"Um, actually, I find the ones here freakishly large. Until I met Sona I just sort of assumed that there was no average sized woman here."

Shirou's hopes had been dashed when Issei's eyes had actually teared up and he'd started sobbing openly at the horrors that Shirou must have seen to not automatically prefer large breasts. He'd promised that he could cure him and help fix him, launching into a litany of all the wonders of the female flesh. After a minute of what was promising to be an epic monologue on the glories of mammary flesh, and an increasing number of dagger glares from females in the cafeteria, he was contemplating quietly trying to sneak away.

He gave a moment's contemplation of what would have happened if Issei had tried this in front of Rin, only to almost start laughing. He sighed, shaking his head, deciding to just let the other teen get tired. Besides, it seemed as though everyone was disgusted but somewhat used to the behavior. He got up to leave for his class to hear Issei comment "I'm glad we we were able to talk today, it was a good conversation."

Shirou was somewhat baffled as he had said literally no more than two sentences in the entire "conversation", but decided to just move on, and mentally made a note to avoid being alone at lunch in the future.

Sona had made arrangements to introduce Shirou to the Occult Research Club and Student Council after school. He'd been calmly shuffled in and introduced himself politely to the two peerages. Rias had her full peerage present, while Sona had only had a few members, claiming that the responsibilities of the student council kept her from having them all there to meet him.

Sona had Shinra Tsubaki, the vice-president of the student council, who reminded Shirou of a taller, more angular version of Sona, and Saji Genshirou, the blond male secretary. Rias had a much larger group, consisting of Koneko Toujou, a young girl whose looks reminded Shirou of Illya so keenly it was painful to look at her, though her eyes were amber instead of red. There was also Akeno Himejima, a dark haired voluptuous beauty, Issei, whom he had met earlier, and finally Yuuto Kiba, a blond teenage boy who felt familiar for some reason.

There were too many people for him to really remember their names immediately, but he was well aware that the meeting was more to let the members of the two peerages know that they needed to keep an eye on him than for any other reason. Still, he had found that he had enjoyed meeting them regardless. It was rather unnerving that they seemed to be far more human than the descriptions Kiritsugu and Rin had frequently given of other maguses.

The next day continued mostly the same as the one before, and Shirou knew that he was likely going to fall into a routine. It was in his instinct to help others out. Instinctively he sought work from the student council, so prohibitions on his use of magic outside of their presence weren't particularly difficult to work around. Sona had looked rather surprised when she had seen him call upon magic to help fix a broken fan, but had let the matter pass without comment.

On the way to school she had informed him that he needed to stay out of trouble for just one more day until her sister could arrive and take him off her hands. This was why Shirou had to pause to consider his course of action when Issei ran up to him after school and asked him a rather unusual question.

"Would you save someone even if you had to disobey your master?" Issei asked his question so rapidly that the words were difficult to understand. Shirou understood the question rather easily… and knew exactly what his answer would be. He opened his mouth to speak but remembered the several warnings that he had gotten from Sona to stay out of trouble… and decided to gather a bit more information.

"What do you mean by save?" Shirou settled on asking. He still strongly believed in following his course of action, but he had grown more aware that there were ways to save people that were defined differently by others. Personally, he wasn't sure he would consider himself to have saved Issei as the boy had become a devil, but Issei clearly had considered him a savior based on their interactions.

"Asia, my friend, President told me not to get involved but she was kidnapped by the Fallen! I'm sure they're holding her against her will. " Issei hurriedly relayed the facts to Shirou.

Shirou was momentarily confused; Rias had not seemed one to condemn someone to die based on what he had heard about her or in their interactions. He asked Issei, "Why did she tell you not to go?"

"President told me not to get involved because they're holding her in a Church, and those are deadly to devils. There's also some politics stuff but I don't really care about any of that!" Issei declared. Issei then lowered his head and groaned. He sounded like he was in pain. He then lifted his head and declared "I'm going to save her."

Shirou was moved. It sounded so like his own goal that he could almost have forgotten his conversation with the boy from befo –

"Her body must not be lost!"

Or not.

Regardless, he knew he was going to tell Issei to save the girl. He had just been prevaricating to ease his own conscience for avoiding breaking his word with Sona.

"I'll help you, Issei. Where's this church?"

Issei had been set to rush to the church, but Shirou had been the voice of caution and warned him that he might want to get some allies. He had promptly managed to gather Koneko and Kiba and somehow convinced them not to run off and inform Rias immediately. Shirou had a sneaking suspicion that they had discretely informed her somehow, but he considered that a prudent action to take anyways – just not if it came at the expense of a girl's life.

The group of four circled the entrance of the church. Issei was ready to charge in and it was taking the combined efforts of Kiba and Shirou to convince him that rash actions were extremely unwise on the battlefield. Koneko seemed content to watch mutely. In the midst of this Shirou smelled oil and feathers. He grabbed Issei and pulled him to the ground instantly, he recognized that scent. A light spear sizzled through the air immediately through the space Issei had been in.

"Good instincts, Kid." A male voice called out from above. There were three fallen angels hovering a dozen or so feet in the air above them.

He bowed and began to introduce himself "I am Dohna-" only to pause immediately as a sword pierced his stomach and his words finished only with a burst of blood.

"Go. Save that girl. Don't worry about anything else." Shirou told Issei. The others were watching the scene with dropped jaws. It was not that the skill with which Shirou had acted was something they were unaccustomed to, it was rather the pure rudeness. Even the fallen seemed taken aback by the sheer viciousness. The devils nodded and rushed into the church, leaving him to guard the entrance.

He had learned from the Grail War, though. To take every advantage offered by a nonhuman. The being had probably thought that he was far enough out of range to react to any attack, but his bow had momentarily taken his view off of his opponents. It was clearly fatal mistake and Shirou had instantly projected Kanshou and Bakuya to take advantage of the mistake. He had launched Kanshou directly into the beings stomach, expecting it to be at most a glancing blow from the lack of force. That it had driven into the fallen with enough force to sever his spine was a total surprise to even himself.

The feathered being dropped out of the sky, landing at his feet. He expression seemed filled with surprise even as Shirou calmly lowered the other of the married blades and let loose a spray of crimson.

He felt like he was back in the grail war as spears came raining down from the two other fallen present. One looked to be extremely young, but he had no misconceptions as to the level of danger she presented. Illya had looked young and still nearly killed him many times, after all.

The fallen rocketed higher into the air, clearly hoping to be out of range of whatever magic he had used on their comrade. For the moment all Shirou could do was parry the spears as they came raining down. The force behind them was clearly less than he had felt from the first fallen he had encountered, he catalogued for later review in his mind.

Unfortunately if he attempted to project a bow or other ranged weapon he would probably be unable to use it without getting severely injured by one of the spears. He could settle for just parrying the blows and waiting for his opponents to make a mistake – they seemed rather inexperienced at combat, based on their comrade's death. Shirou shook his head- that route lay death.

Glancing around, he took in the terrain more fully. He darted around the corner of the church, hiding beneath an outcropping. The fallen would have to move around, and in that time he would have the opportunity to project a bow. He let Kanshou and Bakuya dissolve, then tried to summon the bow of Archer and cursed when the flickering effect he had noticed before took place. He shrugged, wishing he had more opportunities to practice the magic here, settling on what he knew worked for now and resummoned Kanshou and Bakuya.

He settled his weight of gravity low, readying his blades for an attack from above. He was unsurprised when he easily parried an incoming light spear launched by the elder fallen. Shirou was ready to leap in any direction, waiting for the attack from the other to come, and was rather surprised when the young fallen charged low and fast, using a copse of trees as cover.

If he hadn't been able to sense her magic coming he would almost certainly have taken a blow. As it was, he still had to dive into a roll. She had given up her highground advantage in a desperate move to take him out – it was clear they had realized that they were inferior to him in direct combat and had to resort to extreme measures for victory. At the beginning of his roll he threw Bakuya to one side, holding on to Kanshou and using it to parry a light spear aimed directly at his moving body.

He leaped upright, completing the roll, and was satisfied, though slightly surprised to see the Bakuya tear through the younger angel in an explosion of gore.

The other fallen shrieked in horror, turning to run away, Shirou was tempted to collapse in relief, but was going to keep his guard up until she ran away. The moment she turned around completely though, she became consumed in an explosion of dark red energy that smelled of … nothingness, to Shirou. It was a scent that reminded him of… Rias.

He turned around to see Rias watching him, a terrifyingly cold expression on her face. Akeno was with her, but her perpetual smile was missing for once. Rias walked past him, up the entrance of the Church, glancing around at the interior. The sounds of battle could still be heard from inside of the Church, but she turned around and approached Shirou again.

"Did you undermine my authority with a member of my peerage?" She asked, calmly.

Shirou's senses shrieked of danger. The sense of danger was reinforced when he saw her gathering a mass of the earlier energy in her hands.

"Technically... I did not." He felt the danger pass… but then she asked a follow up question.

"Technically? Would you have undermined my authority?" Rias asked brusquely, calmly playing with the orb of energy she was holding. It was a rather terrifying experience, even for one with Shirou's experiences.

"I did nothing to discourage him, and I did aid in his doing so." Shirou attempted to sidestep the question, but apparently the damage was done. Rias nodded, and turned away.

"Undermining my authority is by far the most dangerous act any magician could have done. No member of my peerage can ever associate with you, do you understand? Do not contact any of them outside of my presence." Rias stated flatly. Now that she was turned around, Shirou noticed that her shoulders seemed to be shaking with suppressed rage. "I'll send for Sona to get you from here. Be gone by the time I leave this church"

AN - Not totally happy with this, but I think it's as good as I'll get it for now. I hate working out naming conventions when they don't transfer very well – I'm not going to maintain certain honorifics because I'm not Japanese. English is a remarkably flexible language, and adding in words that have no equivalents is pretty much why it has so many words. I'm trying to use as little of untranslatable terminology as possible.

As far as magic goes, it is not something from canon of either universe, but is rather my own mostly nasu-inspired take on some issues that could arise from being in a rather drastically different universe – the basic theme of this is that there are always consequences, and an action like changing universes will have one more drastic than other changes. Once Shirou learns exactly what the differences are he will be significantly stronger than he was in the fate route.

It's very much a butterfly effect in action, btw – it's impossible to start out from the beginning of DxD and not have some canon storyline occur, but the further the storyline moves the less canon is going to matter, or at least, the less it will be the focus – if something is going to happen basically the same as in Canon, I'm not going to do more than a throwaway line – which is why Issei's fight with Raynare is undescribed here. Oh, and I actually think Rias is in the right here – Shirou is a pretty dangerous guy to have around highly impressionable people like Issei, though she may not realize the extent of that yet.


	7. Consequences

AN: I own neither fsn or high school dxd

Ch. 7 Consequences

Akeno looked somewhat alarmed as Rias walked away, but was told to guard Shirou while Rias' checked on the others. It was a rather awkward wait. Shirou opened his mouth to Asia question several times, and then closed it, clearly hesitating to state what was on his mind.

It was only a short time later that a magical circle appeared and Sona teleported into the area. "Come with me" Sona said. The circle was still glowing and clearly active with whatever had imbued it with power. Shirou's feelings about stepping into an unknown destination were rather equivocal... something which apparently showed on his face.

"It is just a teleportation to my house." She said with a roll of her eyes. "We can walk if you prefer, this is a more efficient method, however."

"If we could?" Shirou asked. He was feeling rather on guard against unknown magical energies at the moment.

They walked back to Sona's house in relative silence. Shirou had tried to ask a question, but Sona had told him to wait until they were in private. Shirou had nodded; it was a sensible precaution to take.

He was slightly surprised that Sona seemed far less agitated than Rias'. After they entered the house the two of them separated to opposite sides of the first room they entered. Shirou expected a full interrogation on his actions and was surprised when Sona was silent.

"Aren't you going to ask me what happened?" Shirou began the conversation.

"No. Rias sent me a text." Sona supplied dryly. Shirou was still getting used to the idea of supernatural beings casually using technology. He blamed Rin somewhat, but had to admit it was slightly hilarious that feared creatures of darkness were more up to date on technology than she had been.

"So you know what happened? Why was Rias so angry at me?"

Sona sighed. "Rias wasn't actually angry at you. She was merely a bit annoyed. She was enraged at herself."

"Why?" Shirou asked.

"She was immensely upset that she had made an improper judgment call and that her flouting of proper protocol had been a mistake."

"Protocol?" He queried. For once Sona seemed to be in a somewhat communicative mood.

"The proper action for Rias' to take had she believed the story that she gave me, that you were a stray apprentice magician, would have been to turn you over to a devil-allied mage association for training with a sponsorship option. She would have been required to sponsor your training, but have acquired first rights to any research and the first claim on offering you peerage."

"So, her offer to let me stay in the area... "Shirou began

"Was extremely kind. Many would even say foolishly kind. But that is in her nature." Sona supplied.

"Um... I'm sorry, but I still don't quite understand why Rias was so upset. Is her authority really so important."

"I suppose there is no harm in informing you of some of the more known aspects of devil culture. And it could prevent this situation in the future" Sona murmured.

"To understand her problem, you must first understand the peerage system. Before I told you merely that it was a system of loyalty for devils, which is true, but it goes much further." Sona told Shirou, straightening her glasses, her voice taking on a lecturing tone.

"After the great war between the biblical factions devil population was at an all-time low. There were serious fears about extinction, and many extreme solutions were proposed. The one that won out in the end was the evil piece system - higher ranked devils would be supplied with a set of chess pieces that could be used to turn someone into a devil." Sona took a breath.

Shirou patiently waited for her to continue - he wasn't quite sure how this related but the confident aura Sona gave off during her explanation left no doubt that it was.

"Once someone was converted to a devil they became the de facto servant of the one who had converted them. The pieces could revive even those at the very brink of death." Sona's voice took on a clear tone, and Shirou knew she was about to inform him of the most important part.

"However, there was a ... flaw. Either by inevitable nature or by design, there was a dark twist. If a person disobeyed their master repeatedly they would become what is known as a stray devil - a being consumed by madness and incapable of nothing beyond acting on their desires. Only the most powerful of devils could avoid this fate, and even those who could recover are often put down out of fear."

Dread was pooling in Shirou's stomach. "So... Issei, he said he was one of Rias' servants... He has one of these pieces in him? Why?"

"Yes. From what I understand he actually traded his freedom in order for Rias' to save your life."

"So by encouraging him to go against his master's orders..." Shirou said

"-you put him at risk of becoming a stray. As long as he considers obeying Rias' to be the proper course of action by default, he is at no risk. But in his introductory phase of being a devil it is especially important for him to not develop bad ideas about loyalty - it is somewhat expected for him to disobey Rias' on occasion while he adjusts to being a devil. What can never be accepted is for him to seek someone else's opinion on whether he should be loyal. Do you understand her displeasure now?" Sona asked.

Shirou nodded. Sona exhaled, looking relieved.

"I do have one more question... Why didn't you turn me over to a Magus association?"

"At first it was because it would have been going against Rias' wishes. Then it was because I began to wonder if you really might be an extra dimensional being, which is something my sister is responsible for. It would be rather embarrassing if the Satan's sister let someone like you get out of the hands of devils."

"...especially if he proved troublesome to other factions" a different voice sounded. Sona whirled towards the source and exclaimed "sister!"

There was a new devil present. A door was opened to a part of the house that Shirou had never been. Shirou was astonished that he had someone missed sensing the vast quantity of power he now felt coming off of her. If he hadn't just felt proof of it, he would have said concealing that level of power was impossible.

"Serafall Leviathan, at your service," the devil introduced herself with a small bow.

"Your clothes... They're..." Sona sounded utterly baffled.

"What's wrong with my clothing?" Serafall peered down at herself as if trying to find a flaw. She was wearing what seemed to Shirou like a fairly normal set of clothing, a green top and normal length black skirt. "Should I change into my other set?" She asked in confusion.

"No!" Sona shouted. "Why don't I ever see you in those normally!?"

"Because you never see me at work. Sona is silly." Serafall said, confiding the last part to Shirou in a faux whisper.

One of Sona's eyebrows started twitching at this comment, and she opened her mouth to speak but Serafall preempted her. "Sona, we can play later. I need to deal with this first." She indicated Shirou with a wave of her hand.

Serafall's physical appearance was rather reminiscent of Sona's. She had the same violet eyes. Though she was shorter, she did appear a bit more mature in certain... areas.

Shirou was experiencing some slight dissonance from the sheer level of power he could sense from the being in front of him. As she drew nearer to him he felt the scent of water growing so strongly that he felt as though he were drowning. He winced visibly as she waved her hand in his direction.

"Oh? What's this?" Serafall asked. "He seems rather sensitive. Have you been helping him, Sona?"

"No. He seemed unusually sensitive to me as well, but not to this degree." Sona replied calmly.

Serafall giggled. "It is always so cute to see you act grown up, Sona."

Sona gritted her teeth but didn't reply.

Shirou's senses were slowly starting to be overwhelmed. He could barely even breathe and his vision was slowly darkening. Then Serafall snapped her fingers and his senses returned to normal. He started gasping for breath.

Shirou glanced down at her hands and saw her holding a glowing parchment in one of them. She noticed his look and commented "I'm running a few tests on you right now. Sorry, one of them did include testing your sensitivity to magics, but curiosity had me test it a bit further."

Serafall straightened and addressed him directly. "Do you know why I'm here?"

"Because Sona called for you and it is part of your responsibility to deal with non-devils" Shirou answered.

"Mmhm, not quite. Of course I would come immediately if my sister ever asked, but a mere non devil in devil territory is a common day occurrence. It has to do with your other claim, being a true foreigner, in a sense."

She waved her hand and Shirou shuddered as he felt another wave of power creating over him. He noticed the parchment was being filled in in relation to the action.

"Believe it or not, we have an established protocol for dealing with extra planar entities. In fact, many would consider devils themselves to be native to a different dimension. I'm comparing you to all the various species that are known, currently. Along with some minor notes of your capabilities." Serafall continued.

"Sona, do you know why we are doing this?" Serafall asked her sister while continuing to manipulate the energies around Shirou.

Sona's head popped up, a light entered her eyes and she began to cite off an answer as if she had just been given a pop quiz.

"Yes. It is because there have been some political incidents in the past when an individual of one faction was mistreated after having their memory erased.

"Right. This way we can just give the person to whoever is responsible for them and not have to worry about the political fallout. Isn't Sona cute?" Serafall leaned towards Shirou and whispered the last part in his ear. He shuddered. This woman was terrifying, but she acted so... casually. It was deeply disturbing to him in a way that he was completely unfamiliar with. In the grail war he had dealt with insanely powerful beings, but none of them had been so openly friendly.

She stepped back and opened the parchment fully, studying the results.

"Now, we have a dilemma here. There's only one last test to run but I doubt that you're technically a dragon. So how do we deal with someone who tests negative for almost every known species? And if you are a true, new, unknown being, how did you get here? I don't sense sufficient power from you to even manage normal teleportation, let alone dimension traversing movements."

Shirou was silent. He'd frankly been almost paralyzed with fear from the moment he sensed this being. He had thought he had met powerful beings, but he doubted any of the servants he had met could compare in raw power to this being. He was fighting his impulse not to run every second he had been in her presence, and only her relaxed manner had kept him from doing something rash. It bothered him even more because he was fairly sure she had sensed his discomfort.

Serafall glanced at the parchment again, brows rising. "Well... You are a partial match for a dragon. More than you are for human, in fact. There's also an aspect that I would need to verify more. Do you have any ideas?"

Shirou was silent. He didn't want to reveal the existence of Avalon, but if forced he would probably have to. The reason for his reluctance was actually not entirely because of his reaction to Serafall - it was because if he revealed how he had survived the trip then Zelretch's would likely attempt to make use of it for others. Zelretch had said he was watching, after all.

"Hmm, then how did you get here?" Serafall asked.

"He said he was sent by a creepy old man he had never met before when Rias' asked" Sona supplied.

Serafall giggled. "Creepy old man is a pretty good description of most Mages; I take it that is what you meant?" She asked Shirou.

He nodded. "Could you stand back a bit further?" He finally broke down and asked. "You're... Rather overwhelming to my senses"

"That could be a wonderful compliment, but I doubt that is how you meant it." Serafall made a slightly pained groan then asked, "How about now?"

Her presence was now less than even Sona's. Shirou nodded; hopefully this would unscramble his senses.

"Um... Do I have any input in this?" Shirou asked. Serafall paused and looked up at him. "Sona?" She called out, prompting a response.

"No... Technically you forfeited all rights when you were found trespassing in devil territory as an unaffiliated Magus." Sona listed off breathlessly. She took a breath and then continued in a more normal tone, "Please don't think ill of my sister. She isn't trying to be cruel; it is something she has to do to ensure the safety of devils in general."

Shirou was rather annoyed. "You tricked me." He stated flatly. "You left out this whole unpleasant testing process."

Sona looked slightly abashed. "Well... Normally it is a very brief, painless process."

Serafall had a slightly sheepish expression at this.

"I can't disobey the direct laws that were laid in place for this sort of event. It is very specifically laid out that humans are not considered to have rights in devil territory."

"And there is still resistance to giving any sort of freedom to non-pureblooded demons." Sona interjected

"Sona, you're scaring him. The old Satan faction is considered extremist by most devils." Serafall chided absentmindedly, clearly focusing on the parchment.

"We're not evil, just politicians" Sona contributed

Serafall gaped at Sona. "Believe it or not Sona, that's the most terrifying phrase I've ever heard… please stop trying to reassure him."

Shirou honestly considered attacking them for a brief moment. Then he recalled the level of power he had felt from Serafall. It would be beyond suicidal and he didn't really think either Serafall or Sona were part of the problem they were describing.

Upon seeing his face darken, Serafall quickly contributed a bit more "Most devils don't interact with humans at all. Kuoh city is one of the few actively controlled areas in the human world. The average devil thinks about a human rarely in their life. Rias and Sona are responsible for this area, Sirzechs and I think it's a good way for them to develop certain skills."

Sona was flashing Serafall a vaguely betrayed look. "We thought we were being so independent, too."

Serafall smirked and turned to face Shirou. "Shirou, would you cooperate for a few questions?" She asked. "I'm going to run the tests again while compensating for something, I have a suspension here. It shouldn't be uncomfortable this time."

"Do I really have any choice?" Shirou asked bitterly.

"Well, I'm not going to torture you or anything regardless, but it really is because I am concerned as to how you managed to get here."

"You believe me?" Shirou was startled.

"Yes" Serafall nodded emphatically staring at a new sheaf of parchment as it filled in much more rapidly, "there's no way for these results to have come up based on the history of this world."

"How so?" Sona asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Well, first off, he tests as positive for a species that went extinct millennia ago. And for human. That's simply not possible, it shows him as being 100% human and still somehow also partially Fae, though if any race were capable of tricking immutable logic, they would be it."

"I thought fairies were still around, and considered mostly harmless." Sona interjected.

"They are, but I'm referring to the Fae. They were the stronger, much more powerful relatives. Their magic was capable of twisting reality into illusions."

Sona opened her mouth to ask a further question, but Serafall cut her off

"I can elaborate that more in a moment, but first... Shirou, can you please tell me if your presence is any cause for me to be worried?" Serafall gazed directly into Shirou's eyes, a pleading expression on her face.

Shirou was puzzled. He had no idea what to make of this Satan. One moment she was beyond terrifying, the next second making a genuinely impassioned plea.

"Um... why would I be a cause for worry?" He asked.

"Well, you're clearly not powerful enough to have made this journey on your own. And you have an extremely potent taint from the presence of a hostile dragon. I have never sensed stronger - I thought you were a dragon at first."

"Taint?" Shirou asked. Seeing Sona have a confused expression on her face as well, Serafall elaborated. "I can't stand to see my sister have such an expression, so I'll do some impromptu teaching."

"The very nature of a dragon warps the reality around them. It twists it according to their wishes. This trait appears in most extremely powerful beings, but all dragons possess it a degree. It is rather insidious and the real reason why the greater dragons are so carefully monitored by the factions. Even sealed within the sacred gears the heavenly dragons are capable of twisting the minds of even devils."

Sona seemed fascinated. Shirou's head was almost spinning; it was a bit too much information for him.

"Because of the restrictions the gears place upon their perceptions it is rather easy to work around this twisting by convincing their host of a certain reality. And it is channeled through their host's desires. " Serafall continued

"Shirou appears to have been exposed to very high levels of draconic energy, but his very existence seems to resist manipulation of any kind." Serafall appeared bashful for a moment. "I'm sorry for testing that out, by the way - it looked very painful."

"What are you talking about? Shirou asked

"You know how I mentioned very powerful beings are capable of some sort of twisting? A Satan certainly qualifies. I tried unleashing a very small portion of my presence upon you-"

"But I didn't notice anything!" Sona interrupted.

"Well, you're both a devil and my sister. I don't have a control of it beyond instinctual, unlike a dragon, whose very nature is made up of instinctual control of those sorts of forces. It's not a particularly useful ability as it's not rapid enough to be used in combat and I can't make it affect other devils intentionally." Serafall explained in a nonchalant tone.

"But the residual levels of draconic energy on Shirou even now are enough to probably make the average human rather uncomfortable in his presence, but he seems to have adapted to it."

"I will continue on more on that if you wish later" Serafall said to Shirou, "but first – Shirou, please, for my people, let me know how you ended up here. I know that you don't wish to talk about it, but I can tell that you are hiding something."

Shirou's attention focused on one key point. It was really the source of his internal struggles. "Are devils people?"

"Hmm... Beelzebub would probably be better qualified to answer that than I. Sona?" Serafall asked.

"Ah... me?" Sona replied.

"Yes, you should answer that question. You've been around humans more than I and you're also much more up to date on the average devil's views – they rarely act normally around one of their leaders." Serafall said.

Sona took a deep breath and began, "Well… some devils are bad, some are good. Many would probably be confused by that question as they would think that humans are the ones who don't qualify as people. There are humans who hunt devils for sport and would never entertain the notion that they are people at all. It seems to go both ways. I feel like I'm not going to be able to give an unprejudiced view on that issue, but I would say that they are. I think only you can answer that question for yourself, though."

"Could I have a moment to think about it?" Shirou asked.

"Of course." Serafall answered.

Shirou was somewhat perplexed. He knew he was in the midst of a complicated political situation that was frankly beyond his ability to comprehend. His training had focused almost purely on combat and magecraft, as those were the areas where his talent lay. He had come to this world on nothing more than a threat and a promise of salvation. The more individuals that became involved the less sure he was of the validity of any course of action he could choose.

Serafall had practically admitted that Sona was holding him prisoner, but Sona had also admitted that his alternatives weren't particularly good within their own system. He gathered that Serafall was one of the leaders of the devils, but her power wasn't absolute, she couldn't just ignore the laws of her own people. They were treating him far better than the equivalent levels of magus from his own world would have, if Kiritsugu's descriptions had been accurate.

He shook his head; he still had no idea what to do. They seemed like good people to him, if a bit cold, but their own descriptions of their race didn't make them sound particularly noble. He decided to try and gather some more information – he saw no possible downsides to that approach.

"Do you know of a Great Red Dragon?" He asked Serafall in a serious tone.

"Yes." Serafall replied. "If you saw that then… you really did come from outside."

"Is there any way possible to get past him without causing mass extinction?" Shirou asked, an intense edge to his voice.

"I would never have believed it was possible to make it past him at all if I hadn't seen you here… that's definitely his presence on you… wait…" Serafall looked at Shirou, realization dawning. "Did you see a dream in his presence?"

Shirou deflated. "Yes, I saw a dream."

"Shirou, what was it that the Great Red saw when it looked at your dreams?" Serafall asked gently.

Shirou looked off to the side and mumbled. "It's embarrassing. Everyone laughs at it."

"Don't worry, my dream is embarrassing too, and everyone laughs at it too." Serafall reassured.

"I want to save as many people as possible. I want to be a true hero." Shirou declared.

"That's so… that's" Serafall began. Shirou cringed in expectation of laughter.

"That's so beautiful! It's really close to my dream - I want to be a hero too, I want to be a magical girl!" Serafall declared in a heroic pose.

"Wha…. What?" Shirou was shocked.

Serafall leaped forward and hugged an utterly baffled Shirou, tears in her eyes. Sona sighed and put her head in her hands and groaned.

"I even made an outfit, see?" She leaped backwards, spinning in place as she changed into a magical girl outfit in a rather revealing transformation, complete with a sparkly wand.

"Just one time, just one time I wanted to get through a visit from you without seeing that outfit." Sona said despairingly.

"Oh relax, Sona I'm a very good judge of character. I waited until I was sure he wouldn't have tried to hurt us before showing off. And I would have switched into it the second we were done with official business anyways, when I was hanging out with just you." When Sona seemed unconvinced by this argument, Serafall huffed and turned back to the still astonished Shirou.

"Ok, so" Serafall started tapping her wand on her chin as she thought out loud "You want to know of a way past the Great Red that won't result in the cataclysmic destruction of life. Knowing him, he probably thought your dream was hilarious and let you pass through. Surviving to that point is a result of whatever you have that lets you maintain your nature. Are you interested in it for yourself, to go back home?"

Shirou opened his mouth to reply and was immediately cut off by Serafall. "No, no you wouldn't be capable of it even if you were powered by dozens of virgin sacrifices. The power just isn't there. You're asking for someone else… but it's not anyone here, you've been monitored so it has to be someone in your home universe… you have a way to make contact with them." She stopped tapping the wand.

"So… you have to find a way for them to get past the Great Red, if you don't… mass extinction could occur… with your dream and that motivation… that's a rather terrifying mastermind behind this setup." Serafall jumped slightly. The motion drew Shirou's attention to parts of her body that were moving rather nicely. "So, how right am I?"

"Uh, sorry, it's hard to take you seriously when you're dressed like that." Shirou answered honestly, still struggling to keep his eyes above her neck.

"Sona, where do you find such mean people? They sound almost exactly like you do." Serafall complained.

Sona smirked. "Well, I can't fault him. I do guess you're lucky that your breasts are larger than "average-sized""

Shirou winced "You heard about that? I meant that as a compliment! Rias' are just unrealistically large to me."

Serafall looked between the two of them, eyes wide. "Is that why you side with Sona on this? You want to date her? I'm all for that match, you can pretend to hate magical girls all you want if that's the case."

He shook his head, trying to clear it of the insanity of a satanic magical girl asking him to date her sister. "No, you know what? Let's talk about the possible destruction of life on your planet instead." It seemed like a less dangerous topic. He had no idea how what had started as a serious conversation had devolved into gossip about Sona's breast size and his dating preferences.

Shirou's dilemma was still present. His opinion of the devil race wasn't particularly high. The level of power and competence Serafall had displayed did make her seem like a useful ally, however. He was very reluctant to side with devils on this matter, but he felt like they were his best chance of saving the human race. To save as many people as possible he would have to cooperate with beings that he didn't exactly care for.

Sensing his wavering, Serafall said "Please. We can try and save as many people, humans or devils, as we can, together."

He sat cross legged on the floor, making himself comfortable for a long discussion. He then proceeded to explain Zelretch's motives in sending him across and his experience with the Great Red.

"Wouldn't you functioning as this… "eye" for him serve to assuage his curiosity?" Sona asked after he had finished explaining. Serafall was deep in thought, idly spinning her wand in one hand.

"No… he sounded utterly obsessed. He seemed very much like a classical magus from my world, they're completely motivated by curiosity. Their ultimate goal is to reach the Akashic Record, the Root of All Things. And once I die he would need a new method for information, he definitely wasn't human. I think he'll outlive me easily. He smelled very old."

Serafall snapped the fingers of the hand not holding the wand. "That's why you're being so vague about whatever kept you alive through the dimensional gap – it's so he can't abuse it to make more "eyes". I will say it won't help him, as your description of the Great Red makes it sound like he never attacked you because he was too busy laughing at you."

"er…" Shirou's reluctance had far more to do with his wariness of inhuman magical beings that called themselves devils and his desire to prevent them from forcibly trying to extract an immensely powerful object from his body.

"Yes, let's go with that." He said in a rather unconvincing tone. He saw Sona raise an eyebrow but Serafall seemed to accept it and moved on, still deep in thought. She motioned to Sona to continue with questioning Shirou. He noticed Serafall muttering "Akashic Record" under her breath as she did so.

"Is this mage really so powerful as to be of this level of concern?" Sona asked.

"Honestly, I felt more threatened by Serafall earlier…but I'm not trained enough as a magus to really make that sort of evaluation, and she did say that what was bothering me wasn't purely her level of power anyways." Shirou said.

"If he's powerful enough to send him across the true Dimensional Gap, then yes. His statements about mass extinction may be grandiose delusions or bluffing to persuade Shirou to do his bidding, but it does explain why the Great Red has been reported to be unusually hostile lately." Serafall supplied while continuing to stare at her wand.

Serafall looked up. "So as I see it, there are three possible options here – We can reinforce the Great Red to be even more ridiculously powerful as a sort of unintentional guard dog. There are several flaws with this – namely that their very fight might be immensely destructive no matter what occurs."

"Second, we can try to develop a way for this Zelretch to bypass the Great Red. Flaws with this are that we have no real idea what he will do when he gets here and that it may be impossible. There are two sub methods there, one is to develop a mystical bypass to the Great Red and the other is to convince the Great Red to just let him pass. That's rather unlikely as the Great Red only seems to be trolling the dimensional rift looking for a good fight. It's rather hard to have a discussion with him- he's odd even for a dragon."

"It's possible to have a discussion with… that?" Shirou asked.

"No." Serafall clarified. "Not really."

"But the good news," She continued on a more positive tone, "is that we have plenty of time – you've made it sound as though this is a very old, patient mage. I need to bring this information to the other three Satans so that we can decide what to do with it. Unfortunately, Shirou, we need to restrict you somewhat. Thank you for admitting that you serve as his eye, but we're going to need to keep you in a fairly neutral area – giving him a possible insight into devil abilities may not be in our best interest if we pursue certain of these plans. Continuing with Shirou on here is probably for the best."

Serafall turned to look directly at Shirou.

"To compensate for your aid in this matter I'm willing to help you out with your goals, Shirou. I will put you up in Kuoh academy until you graduate and arrange for training in magic for you. I'll do this regardless of the decisions of the rest of the Satans."

"Do I really need High School for any of my goals?" He wondered out loud. He received two death glares. "Never mind." He gulped.

"I don't know if Rias will be happy with that" Sona said.

Serafall held up a hand. "I'll talk to Rias. I heard your discussion with Shirou earlier and you did a very good job of explaining to him certain facts which Rias certainly should have communicated if she were granting him permission to stay in the area. It seems as though she took it for granted that a mage would know them, she probably hasn't interacted enough with newer magi."

"Now, Shirou. Go to bed. Sona and I have some bonding to do." Serafall said as she dragged her sister into the room she had first emerged from. He heard shrieks of terror, shuddered, and decided to leave it alone and just take the Leviathan up on her suggestion.

AN:

Shirou : unintentionally charming women in multiple universes.

Serafall is often depicted in fanfiction as a very ditzy girl who is always wearing a magical girl outfit. I think that's how Sona sees her, certainly, but I don't think Sona is correct- she seems rather like an extremely efficient individual who happens to have some very strange hobbies and aspirations (which may or may not be totally serious) and has a serious obsession with her sister. Serafall seems perfectly capable of separating out her personal and business sides (unless it involves her sister's safety, Sona definitely had a realistic concern about Kokabiel). Even at a party she doesn't wear her magical girl costume until literally asked to change by a foreign leader. She's a good diplomat. Her and Sona have a lot more in common than Sona is willing to admit. She came out as insanely talkative, I'm not sure why that surprised me.

Shirou is a bit more passive than I prefer, but this is probably his weakest area. If I ever rewrite this I might do it in first person just to make him more active.


End file.
